#190: Building The Unified Global Special Operations Alliance - CSM(R) Warren Soeldner

Unified Special Operations commands are critical for allied nations to maintain the advantage over our adversaries. A single command structure enables interoperability at every level, from communications and equipment to tactics and acquisition, ensuring partner forces can train together, fight together, and answer to a common mission. From the Global Special Operations Foundation Symposium https://gsofeurope.org/ in Athens, Greece, Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ sat down with retired Command Sergeant Major Warren Soeldner https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrensoeldner/, a 10th SFG legend who now lives and works in Greece supporting the Global SOF community. Warren brought home the central tenet of modern allied warfare explaining that Special Operations Forces across nations solve problems together, build trust, and operate as one. He spoke about the importance of standing up capable national SOF commands, the evolving NATO environment and the realities of today’s threat landscape. From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the long-term strategic pressure posed by China and Iran, Warren emphasized that modern conflict cannot be viewed through a single lens. War now spans diplomatic, informational, military, and economic domains, and Special Forces play a critical role in shaping outcomes long before conflict becomes visible. This discussion returns to what Green Berets have always done best: building capability in partners, understanding history and culture, maintaining discipline and professionalism, and quietly shaping global security in ways few ever see. HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Introduction1:41 Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast2:48 Building Relationships Across SOF Allies5:38 Joint Unified Command9:15 Defining “By, With, and Through”12:38 Russia-Ukraine War Impact on NATO15:08 NATO Interoperability Gaps17:28 NATO’s Biggest Threat23:14 Students of History27:50 Special Forces in LSCO32:38 US Army Generations41:38 Defining the Green Beret Quotes “The whole theme for the week has been strength and unity.”“The dollar or euro goes a lot further for them when it’s a unified command.” “The threat isn’t waiting on 30 nations and their parliaments.”“It’s important that NATO know, fight, train together.”“When one country is using one standard and the rest of the countries are using another standard, resupply becomes a lot harder for that country.”“At the end of the day, we’re all out on the same battlefield and they’re seeing what we’re doing, we’re seeing what they’re doing.”“Russia is a huge threat right now. We may be getting to hyperfocused on that and forgetting other threats like China and Iran.”“We’ve lost that edge with the adversary. They have a long term plan. We don’t.”“It requires our Green Berets to be students of history.”“I came up in an era where we did two things: Unconventional Warfare and Foreign Internal Defense.”“First you had to learn the culture.”“When I look at Large Scale Combat Operations, do we need artillery anymore?”“In that isolation is where you finetune the skills that you need for that mission.”“There’s nothing special about being a Green Beret.”“I’ve always been a believer that the Green Beret is a symbol and it attracts greatness.”“At the end of the day, the Army’s job is to close with and kill the enemy.” Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  Unified special operations commands are critical for allied nations to maintain the advantage over our adversaries. A single command structure enables interoperability at every level, from communication and equipment to tactics and acquisition, ensuring partner forces can train together, fight together, and answer to a common mission. From the Global Special Operations Foundation Symposium in Athens, Greece, I sat down with retired Command Sergeant Major Warren Soeldner, a 10th Special Forces Group legend who now lives and works in Greece, supporting the global SOF community. Warren brought home the central tenet of modern allied warfare, explaining that special operations forces across nations solve problems together, build trust, and operate as one.

• 0:43Fran Racioppi?

  He spoke about the importance of standing up capable national SOF commands, the evolving NATO environment, and the realities of today's threat landscape, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the long-term strategic pressure posed by China and Iran. Warren emphasized that modern conflict cannot be viewed through a single lens. War now spans diplomatic, informational, military, and economic domains, and special forces play a critical role in shaping outcomes long before conflict becomes visible. This discussion returns to what Green Berets have always done best: building capability in partners, understanding history and culture, maintaining discipline and professionalism, and quietly shaping global security in ways few will ever see.

• 1:25Fran Racioppi?

  Follow the Jed Burke Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. Warren, welcome to the Jed Burke Podcast. Thanks, Fran. Happy to be here. We're sitting out on the deck, I mean, beautiful Greek morning. Yep. All right. Music's playing in the background. We've had some great couple of days here at GSOF, really having some opportunities to sit down with so many of our partners and our allies, talk about the importance of coming together as allied nations. What does that mean? And how do we define interoperability? I think was one of the big terms.

• 2:10Fran Racioppi?

  Terms that we heard getting thrown around, but for us as Green Berets, as guys who served primarily in 10th Special Forces Group where Europe was our area of focus. I mean, you're like the mayor here. You and Stu Braden, you know, absolutely everybody. And Stu's been a great friend of the podcast and been, was on a soft leak and was kind enough to start to welcome us to the GSOF community. You live in Greece?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36Fran Racioppi?

  Okay. Talk for a second about why an organization like GSOF to come to Greece, to have the European Symposium becomes so critical to building these relationships?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Well, as seen in the week, the focus and the theme for this whole week has been strength and unity. Really trying to bring all of our partners together. I mean, the focus for Global SOF Foundation is Global SOF. You know, Stu has been beating his drum, you know, since he retired. It's about bringing all of the global soft together to solve all these problems and to work together. And so every year when these symposiums happen, that's the goal. Here this year, what we've been pushing is to really get Greeks off and their fairly new Special Warfare Command. The visibility, not just with the global soft partners and with the soft partners from other nations, but in Greece as well.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  So what we really wanted to focus on here was to bring everybody here, bring the Greeks in, let the Greek public and more importantly, parts of the government that still don't understand why it's important to have a joint unified command, see that it's a supported option that everybody's using and everybody is, it's the type of command that all the countries are using and that they needed it too. So we brought all these units here, their commanders, their staffs, their acquisition people. And it's been a very successful event.

• 4:09Fran Racioppi?

  The discussion around the joint unified command has been an interesting one this week that is a big takeaway for me because I think we take it for granted. And yes, we know the history, we understand the impetus behind the stand up of US SOCOM. We can remember the helicopters colliding in the desert. Desert one and everybody coming together and saying, okay, we have a real challenge here when our forces can't even speak to each other. You know, and we had a great conversation yesterday with Lisa Costa, who was the director of communications and the chief information officer at SOCOM, who talked about being in the jock during Black Hawk Down situation in Mogadishu and realizing that our air and

• 4:53Fran Racioppi?

  ground units can't talk to each other as effectively as they needed to, to be able to respond to the, to the threat. What we see in those situations is the need to have to bring all of our elements together under a single headquarters so that they can then begin to communicate at the same level, share equipment, share TTPs, answer to the same commander. We obviously take it for granted as, as I was saying, but then you look across the allied forces and I had a chance to sit down with commander of the armed forces of the Philippines, JSOC, that just got stood up.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:28Fran Racioppi?

  And so why is that joint unified command for each of these nations so important for them to stand up?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yep. So when we look at our budget, the US SOCOM budget, I mean, it's massive and for the right reasons. A lot of these smaller countries though, they just don't have that kind of budget. Well, it's not that they don't have them, they're much decreased scale. So for them, making sure that one command is funneling the money down to buy the equipment that the troops need, it becomes more important because in SOCOM, you know, and everybody knows about the thousand dollar hammers that we buy, you know, in the US military.

• 6:08Fran Racioppi?

  That was a mechanized infantry platoon leader.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  So you know.

• 6:11Fran Racioppi?

  And you can get fired for losing the thousand dollar, but you can't go buy it at Home Depot for eighteen dollars.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that worked for us for a bit there, you know, and we fixed that a lot in the US. But here you can't afford to do that. A thousand dollars is a lot of money in a smaller country that doesn't have the GDP we do. So. It's important that as a unified command, when we're talking about acquisitions, especially for trade shows like these where we bring in all of our corporate partners and sponsors and they are they're able to show their wares and the things that you know, these forces might want, that the dollar go there, the Euro here goes a lot further for them when it's a unified command and they can say, okay, well, we need a new weapon system, something that the Greeks are looking at right now, you know, do they upgrade their

• 7:02Speaker 01

  current weapons, or they go to a new weapon, then they look at the prices, but now their unified command is looking to arm their army, navy, and air force special operations and the rest of the military as well. But it's one weapon system, you know, and it may be modified for naval use or maritime use versus air use or versus ground use, but it's going to have the same basics, parts, supplies, ammunition, which is really, you know, where all the money goes when it comes to the weapons. So it's important to have one command to do that instead of, you know, four disparate commands or headquarters at the three star and four star levels, you know, trying to push down something, I mean, we all know, once you get up to those levels, you're not really connected with what you

• 7:43Speaker 01

  need on the ground, so they don't know. And it also leads to the ability to do research and development for specific mission sets. So now you're shopping for specific things, and you're only paying one bill at the unified command level, and those staffs, as opposed to each of those services paying those bills separately and basically, you know, not very cost effective.

• 8:06Fran Racioppi?

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• 8:38Fran Racioppi?

  I want to ask you about the importance of European alliance, specifically NATO, over as 10th groupers. We're intimately familiar with Europe and our allies here in Europe and how important and strategic they've been throughout history, really. I mean, we've been partnered with the French since the American Revolution.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:01Fran Racioppi?

  So, and they become critically important when we talk about force projection. We've got, a couple of years ago at D-Day, we had the chance to sit down with Sergeant Major Inman, Jeremiah Inman, who you probably know, who was at that time the Sergeant Major of US Army Europe and Africa. And you look at, we still have forces in Europe 82 years after the end of World War II, but that only gets us so far. And it's really this concept in SOF of by, with and through our partners and our allies, where we really affect strategic policy of US defense plans.

• 9:43Fran Racioppi?

  Can you define by, with and through and what that means to you as a Green Beret?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, so the NATO partnership here in Europe, something that, you know, I've been a part of, in fact, my first unit, when I came in the Army was in Germany and it was a NATO unit. It's huge that everybody's working together. I'll tell you, my background here, I've worked with the Greeks for a long time and I've lived in Greece and visited here, been here TDY. And in the past, it was always, oh NATO, oh, that's just the US. You know, NATO says do this, that's just the US, they do this. And to, for some part of that, that may have been correct in the past. And yes, we know SACUers, the US generals, so everybody said, well, it's the US telling us. That's changed now. That dynamic has definitely changed and not just because of

• 10:32Speaker 01

  the new administration in the US and the stance on making, you know, other countries in NATO pay their bill as well, but also the fact that since the incursion into Ukraine back in 2014, when you go that far back in Crimea, we, you know, back then we realized, hey, you know, we really didn't have the US forces on the ground here anymore that we needed. And the other country did have to start picking up a lot of the work. And that's when we started to find out that some of the NATO processes weren't really streamlined for other nations to be able to react while the US rebuilt, you know, built up our strength over here again or brought forces back into the theater. So it became critical that the

• 11:13Speaker 01

  other forces now had the ability to project a rapid response force quicker than the NATO process. And at that time, I think it was 30 nations having to agree to do something, you know, and the threat isn't waiting on 30 nations and their parliament. Yeah. So uh, things have changed. And since that time NATO has been getting more streamlined, better. And the other nations have been picking up some of the staffing and procedures and manning of some of these response forces and other units, deployment units. But at the same time, America is the one that, you know, has, you know, a huge piece in it. Now we can, in with the new administration, now we can see people are either the, the parliaments

• 11:57Speaker 01

  here and, and the countries are starting to pick up a lot more of the ball. Because at the end of the day, NATO isn't just the US. NATO is 32 nations now, I believe it is. And so, uh, it's important that they know, fight, train together. And that's what we're doing here. And that's what was I was doing before I, you know, retired from the army. That's what I was doing before I left SAKIR. And that's what I've been doing even now in my capacity here as military liaison for the Global SOF Foundation.

• 12:28Fran Racioppi?

  You mentioned Ukraine in 2014, so Russia's incursion into Crimea. But I think that certainly propelled the conversation about the relevance of NATO at that time. But how much has the conversation around NATO changed since Russia's invasion into Ukraine proper? Now, what, four years ago? I think we're pushing. I mean, how much has that changed the conversation around NATO's relevancy? Because now, I mean, Crimea was one situation, but now, I mean, they're on the doorstep of Europe. And we even had a chance to sit down with the Polish while we were here.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:04Fran Racioppi?

  And the Romanians as well. And they're sitting right there on the edge of, yeah, battle, essentially.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  It's critical. The other part of NATO is, you know, having the same equipment, having the same resupply capabilities, you know, the NATO standard, something that, you know, even some of the NATO countries drifted away from during the fall in the Cold War and into the time leading up to now. And we saw it with the invasion of Ukraine, where now what we had is former Eastern Bloc fighters and tanks and armored vehicles. It, when one country is using one standard and the rest of the countries are using another standard, resupply becomes a lot harder for that country. Now you're running two different resupply lanes. It's, you're not going to resupply for Eastern Bloc equipment other than battlefield recovery

• 13:54Speaker 01

  because obviously, in this case, the threat is also the producer of that equipment. So, so it became.

• 14:01Fran Racioppi?

  They're being Russian equipment.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So it's important that the NATO standard is maintained. It's important that the tactics, even now, we see it, you know, when I did some time in first group and I go over to Asia and the countries there are still looking for what tactics do they use, doctrine, you know? And even now, we tell them through the Global SOF Foundation, it's like, why aren't you using NATO standards? You might as well. The manuals are out there, the procedures are out there, everything is, is available, it's done for you. You know, you build your units into a NATO standard so that now you can come over to Europe and you can exercise with NATO countries. Where NATO countries can come out to Asia, especially, you know, as we look at what do we do there?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And if something accelerates in that region, just like during the Korean conflict, you know, the war. It was all, you know, those were NATO countries that were over there in Korea. So if everybody's fighting the same, training the same, using the same standards, doctrine and equipment, it makes things a lot easier and interoperability is greatly enhanced.

• 15:05Fran Racioppi?

  Interoperability has a big scale too. It's something we've really been talking about this week. I mean, there's interoperability in terms of if we're in allied nations, can we talk to each other? You know, that's interoperability, but there's a level of interoperability too that says, well, you have a platform that I need. Can you give me that use of that platform? I'm going to use it through my systems and then give it back to you when I'm done. How effective has that type of interoperability been in NATO and where are the gaps right now?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been away from the problem set now for about a year and a half, but when I was still working up in Germany, the gaps we were seeing was intelligence sharing compartments, way too many compartments still. And we as a US, we were the worst at it really. You know, we had so many compartments. I mean, half the time we didn't know what we're doing. You know, we've gotten much better at that, moving a lot of our communications down to a NATO secret level and then just keeping the US or the Five Eyes or the other compartment stuff on separate systems, but getting everything down from a top secret level where we seem to always jam stuff that we, even amongst our own people, you know, to keep it separate,

• 16:23Speaker 01

  getting it down to NATO secret, onto NATO secret systems and other systems that we use so that we can share that with the partners and we can share intelligence and information. We can share, you know, some of the doctrines and TTPs, but more importantly, we can plan better together. It's amazing when you're planning an exercise with NATO partners, five, six partners and you're all in a room, everybody's working great and then everybody breaks off and goes in their own little spaces and then redoes the whole plan in order to utilize the assets that they brought with them that have a different TTP that we may not want to share with our partners. And at the end of the day, we're all out on the same battlefield and they're seeing what we're doing, we're seeing what they're doing. So it's important.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  So information, you know, that was always the biggest gap amongst the planners, planning systems and, you know, That's always a problem too. And then we have the language problems too. But a lot of that is with AI and all that. You see here, we're doing briefings here and we're doing general sessions and we're using apps that translate on the fly. So our friends of Filipinos or the gentlemen from the UAE that were here, you know, I'm watching these guys, they're watching it stream in their language as you know, they're up on stage speaking in English. It's an amazing capability that we're now starting and integrate into these planning processes too. So AI is helping

• 17:51Speaker 01

  us a lot. You know, the new era of digital communications is filling that gap down.

• 17:57Fran Racioppi?

  When you look across NATO right now, what do you think the biggest threat is?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  So what I think the biggest threat for NATO now, I mean, obviously, you know, Russia is a huge threat right now, but I think we may be getting too hyper focused on that and forgetting that we do have other threats like China, Iran, until at least recently. But when I travel across NATO countries here and I'm driving on roads that were, you know, built by the Chinese, when I'm using cell towers that were put in place by the Chinese and I'm looking around and I'm seeing everybody's using Chinese technology, electronic, electric cars from China. It's one thing for us to sit in the States, you know, and buy, you know, $80,000 Teslas and, you know,

• 18:43Speaker 01

  $2,000 iPhones and Samsungs. But a lot of the countries, you know, have, they're not as rich or they don't have the salaries and levels of salaries that some of the larger countries have. And they're buying all this stuff. It's not, and so their optic on China may be different. But yet at the same time, is definitely a NATO problem. And these are NATO countries. And so we're looking out the front window at problems that say of China, but coming through the back door is China.

• 19:18Fran Racioppi?

  I think we have to define what war is.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:21Fran Racioppi?

  Based on the adversary that we face.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:24Fran Racioppi?

  And I think we always have to take that back to dime. The diplomatic, informational, military and economic, the elements of national power. And throughout the 250 shows that we've done here and conversations that we've had, that that always tends to kind of come up. Because those are the strings that countries pull. And we can say, oh, well, because we're military, like, we're not at war with China. Maybe not militarily, we can certainly say we're in a gray war with China, possibly through proxies. But economically, we're certainly at war.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Certainly at war.

• 20:07Fran Racioppi?

  Informationally, we're probably certainly at war with China. Diplomatically, you know, I mean, the amount of time that I was fortunate enough to spend in Africa, I mean, the amount of Chinese and Russian investment in Africa is tremendous. And because we don't have the long time affiliation that we do with a lot of the European countries, the ability of them to get in and supplant us.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:32Fran Racioppi?

  Is way easier and way faster and for a way lesser amount of money. For, so their cost of investment is much lower.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:41Fran Racioppi?

  To go to places like Africa where you have a wealth of natural resources and you kind of, I think we continue to underestimate the long-term value of the African nation. Which is a conversation we always had at South Africa and at Africom. But we really have to start to define where are we in respect to the elements of national power. You know, Russia, on the other hand, I mean, are we militarily at war with Russia? We might not have Americans shooting at Russians or Russians shooting at Americans, but we certainly have American weaponry. Hitting Russian targets and then there's, there's no hiding that.

• 21:21Fran Racioppi?

  And the same for Iran. And so I think quantifying it in that metric can really help us to broaden our lens to understand, you know, what are the real threats out there and how are we combating them? Because as we focused so long on the global war on terror, we have to ask ourselves the question, did we then allow these countries, specifically Russia, Iran, who we definitely were fighting in the global war on terror, and China to focus on their long-term plan, to achieve some of the aims that they have. And I think we have to say to some extent, yes.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:59Fran Racioppi?

  So, you know, and certainly not to discredit our efforts in the global war on terror, but to your point, you know, how do you do that? How do you focus on everything at once?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Right. And how do you do it when everything changes every four years? And where some of these threats, they don't have changes every four years and their projection out to success is counted in thousands of years or hundreds of years and generations. And we're going four years at a time and like a ping pong ball in some cases, you know, we're focused over here. Four years later, we shift and we focus over here. We've lost that edge now, you know, with the adversary, whichever adversary it may be, when they have a long-term plan and we don't.

• 22:44Fran Racioppi?

  Hmm. One of the values that we take out of serving the special forces groups is the regional focus. And so I've got to hold our Green Berets high for a minute because I want to talk about, I think it's important. There's two aspects of being a Green Beret that I think separate our 18 series from everybody else. And number one is Green Berets are certainly not a bunch of door kickers. You know, I think that through the global war on terror, that has certainly been a lot of the highlight of a mission set that we have, but that is not the core mission set of what we do. And I'll never say that it should be. I think it's one of the things that we are capable of, but the most important thing that we do is build capability in our partners and our allies, which requires

• 23:28Fran Racioppi?

  our Green Berets to be students, students of history. How important is it to you? To look at our 18 series force and make sure that they are students of history. And how does that set them apart from their conventional partners?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, that's a great question, Fran. I mean, I agree. I mean, Green Berets. I came up in an era where we did two things unconventional warfare and FID, foreign internal defense. All those other supporting missions, the seven missions that we have. Yes, we do those too, but we do them in support of unconventional warfare or FID, which is both sides of basically any conflict. You know, you're either trying to undermine a government through unconventional warfare, a sitting government, or you're helping a sitting government, you know, battle of insurrection or some kind of resistance through foreign internal defense.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  You know, the CQB, the SAR, you know, the long range reconnaissance or the reconnaissance, special reconnaissance, all those other things support that those two lines of effort. So I grew up in an era where, you know, we had smaller teams. We never had full teams. So all of our Green Berets had to do, you know, two or three things at once. And we were doing it in foreign countries. You know, we were going to different countries in Europe or Africa or Asia, or, you know, South America, wherever group we're in or Middle East. And we didn't have resources. We, we had to learn the culture. We had to speak the languages. You know, we had to support ourselves.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  We had to understand the culture because we didn't have huge FOBs with rings of security. And, you know, cap overhead, what we had was us. So first you had to learn the culture so that you could fit in and understand and identify a threat. You know, and mitigate the threat, whatever it would be. So you had to understand their culture, you had to understand their history so that you're not alienating the people you're working with by making comments or not understanding what they've been through to get to where they're at and why we're there now, whether it's training them or helping them defeat, you know, some target. So the history part from my aspect was, you know, we would isolate before we'd go into a,

• 25:53Speaker 01

  on a mission, which we don't do anymore. And, you know, the isolation is where you learn everything there was about that country. You learn about their history, how they got to where they're at, who the leaders were, you know, who the people that put them in that position were, and how did they get there, what their economy was, you know, who their enemies were. Because those, as you go into that country to either help them or fight them, you need to know that too. So the history part has always been important. And I think Green Berets have always been good at doing it. But when you change from that type of environment, now you're going in the fobs and all that, we kind of lose some of that focus because, hey, every night now we're coming back

• 26:34Speaker 01

  to a secure area. And it's a critical piece. And I know we're going back to that. And I'm happy to see that we're finally going back to some of the roots that made special forces successful in the past for the long term.

• 26:49Fran Racioppi?

  So right now, a lot of the discussions around what's the next conflict? Yeah, I would argue that we're in the next conflict. The sooner we start to really realize that, the better off we're going to be. I think a lot of people are starting to really realize that. But how do you define that? The term that's been, I don't want to say it's controversial, but I throw it out there. And it's the term, large scale combat operations. And some people I've been talking to are like, I hate that term. We can't use that term. And other people are like, that's where we are. But large scale combat operations, what's the difference between CT and COIN? Really, you're looking at nation state on nation state. What happens where you have great power competition that starts to come to a head. And that's what you're seeing with a move away from counterterrorism precision operations that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan

• 27:33Fran Racioppi?

  and the global war on terror, which still exists and are still a critical part of what we're doing. And we can't forget about the terrorist organizations who will. Haven't stopped and they all of a sudden didn't wake up one day and go, we don't hate America anymore. You know, they still do and they hate our allies here in Europe and they're willing to target us at the first opportunity. So we can't forget about that. But when we look at large scale combat operations, we're looking at long range precision fires. We're looking over the horizon type operations. We're looking at innovation and technology where autonomous capabilities are going to become critical because the sensors that our adversaries have rival the sensors that have given the

• 28:14Fran Racioppi?

  US and our European allies the advantage over the last 20 plus years. Where do you see special operations integration into large scale combat operations?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's funny because I've argued about this for years, working at staff headquarters and all that. At some point, special forces became its own thing, not so much as in its own branch, but all of a sudden it became about special forces operations. And then you had conventional operations and we're in the same battle space and we had to make up ways to integrate that, even though, I mean, there already was existing ways. And it came about special forces were conducting our own operations. And I've always believed that yes, special forces is its own command and we have our own commanders. But at the end of the day, I grew up again in an era with a Soviet threat where special forces

• 29:14Speaker 01

  supported large scale combat operations. So when that theater commander needed something done and special forces was the right tool, that was a tool that needed to be used. And then in some cases, we have, you know, conventional forces supporting special forces missions. And, you know, the supporting supported the concept. But when we start looking at large scale combat operations, special operations aren't the primary tool for that. And even though we try to make it that, and then we just build our bigger forces, we add more enablers, you know, we bring in more gunships or we bring in, you know, other types of

• 29:55Speaker 01

  technology to conduct those operations ourselves. And in Afghanistan in the mountains, when we were chasing bin Laden, I would argue those weren't large scale combat operations because they're over a large area where we're directing a lot of huge volume of firepower and we had the ability to move in those areas. But when I look at the large scale combat operations, do we need artillery anymore? I mean, we've got swarms now, you know, we've got UAVs, we've got all these other types of capabilities. I would argue, yeah, we still need artillery because if we go back to that type of scale with a larger threat, the value of artillery

• 30:38Speaker 01

  is you can still clear, you know, square kilometers of terrain quickly and effectively with artillery. But, you know, some would argue now we can do that, you know, with UAVs and be more precise. Well, there's something to be said when you're raining, you know, artillery rounds on a whole area. And it's always been a tactic that we had in our pocket, but we've haven't used.

• 31:05Fran Racioppi?

  I asked the Polish deputy commander of their armed forces on the panel the other day, a very similar question about where he saw large scale combat operations playing into SOF in the next several years. And it was interesting, he gave me a very similar answer because he said, you know, I came up in the Cold War with fighting the Soviets. And then we went and the Polish were instrumental in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. And he said, and now I'm fighting the Soviets again. And so all of those, the generation who were young officers and NCOs, you know, who were your peers, who started their careers fighting

• 31:50Fran Racioppi?

  the Soviets, now have to pull those TTPs and tactics back out, modify them for technology and today, and then refight that battle almost again, you know, and prepare for it. And so his position was it's actually not that much different. You know, we've already been here and we've already done that, which I think is very interesting when we look at the army today and you look at the US Army, I mean, you could apply that to our allies as well. But when we look at the US Army today, we've got three. Generations that exist. There's a generation of senior leaders on the enlisted officer side who were the pre nine 11 generation who understood what it was like, you know,

• 32:30Fran Racioppi?

  prior to the CT coin fight and then led our, our country through that and now serve at senior levels. And you have folks like myself who were the nine 11 generation who were inspired by the nine 11 events and said, I gotta go out and serve and they're retiring now. And then you've got a group that's coming in who were not even born on nine 11. And those are the ones who are getting ready now to really, those are our captains, those are our majors, our E6s, our E7s now who are leading our formations. When you look at the three generations in the army

• 33:10Fran Racioppi?

  today, how do we transfer the knowledge and the experience from the pre nine 11 generation, the nine 11 generation to the next generation who's gonna fight, whether it be CT coin or large scale combat operations?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, it's, I remember when Russians crossed into Crimea and I was, I was in Sakhir at the time back then as well. And we're all in, in a, in a conference room. And I mean, I, I was stunned at how surprised all of us were when that happened, because we'd all been looking, you know, at GWOT. Everybody was supporting GWOT. Everybody was supporting GWOT. And it kind of surprised everybody. And as, I mean, when there were some younger people in the room, and younger, I mean, officers and NCOs and they're like, you know,

• 34:08Speaker 01

  What do we do? And I'd heard the news and so I brought in something that we used to have a lot of and and I threw the deck of recognition cards, you know, Soviet recognition cards out on the and I said, well, I guess

• 34:22Fran Racioppi?

  For the equipment.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  We might want to start studying back up on what all those, well, all that equipment looks like, you know, and I was being flippant about it, but, but I was a little disappointed that we had been very surprised and lost the ball. I mean, not, not just SOCCURE. I mean, SOCCURE, we have a thousand things we're looking at and it's a small command, but the whole bigger command had, we had lost the ball and been surprised and got surprised. I mean, we recovered well and got to it. That's what makes us great. And that's one of the reasons we are successful is we recover pretty quickly and get back to the task at hand. But at that point, I realized that we did have a huge gap in learning and in

• 35:06Speaker 01

  understanding in special forces and special operations because we'd been so hyper visionally focused on that, you know, CT coin piece in GWOT and forgotten everything else that we did. Now they still teach it in Q course, but you know, as soon as you get out of the Q course, you're focused on whatever group you're going to and what they're doing. So at the team level, well, you know, when I went back as, you know, to the groups as a CSM, you know, I made it a point as I was going around to make sure that, hey, let's not just get focused on one thing. There should be team training on this. You should be learning about your, going back to, and we did this, we, you know, going back to uh, country study, uh, country studies, mission letters that, you know, assigned countries

• 35:49Speaker 01

  again to ODAs so that they could study and learn how we grew up, you know, when I was young on the team, you know, when I walked into my first team room, they opened the safe and they said, hey, this is our target country. You start reading this and you need to know everything about this country and these are our three primary targets. You know, and back then, you know, my ODA, we had Yugoslavia was, uh, and we had a, it was a, a dam and I can't remember the details anymore, but I mean, and one of our primary targets was a dam. And we had to know everything about that dam. We had to study, you know, our languages. And well, my languages were Greek and German.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I was also learning Yugoslavian because at the end of the day, if they launched our ODA, we were going to take out that dam. I think that's still critical to special forces. And I think that's how we maintain that Soviet era mindset for the ODAs is by making sure that, okay, we can go do CQB and do our SFAUKs and, you know, our Halo refresher and our, you know, and the various other things we do day to day on an ODA. But we should all, I mean, the importance of that ODA is I've got a 12 man team. I've got two six man splits that I can fire like a missile at a target. You know, send them out the door and they're more mature.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  They're culturally aware. They speak the language. They're, you know, proficient in all of their MOSs and their cross training. And I can send them out the door to go hit a target and they're fire and forget. You know, and they'll report back, you know, like we did back then, once a week, or whatever the contact schedule was, you know, something else we've lost. And now, you know, now we can't go out the door without 50 different messages. You know, reams and reams of paper worth of con ops. And, you know, and back then it was, hey, that was why special forces was successful is because they went out and they did their mission. And it wasn't, hey, I need to know what they're doing right now, or I need to direct a mission from the headquarters.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yep. It's important that the team still do that because that is, that is how you fight any threat, you know, because in that isolation, when you're doing that pre-mission isolation, that's where you fine tune the skills that you need for that mission. For instance, I used to preach, you don't need to do SFAUK every year. You know, once you've learned how to shoot, you know how to shoot. Okay. If you're doing SFAUK every year for a mission, the way it requires, you know, that type of precision shooting. Then, okay, great, but you learn how to shoot and then you go when you're in that isolation phrase, a phase of pre-mission training phase, that's when you're supposed to say, okay, well,

• 38:42Speaker 01

  in my mission, I'm going to be doing this. And you spend some time refining those skills to go do that. And or I need to be able, all my guys need to be able to speak a language. Okay. Well, then that pre-mission training phase is where you're tightening up those languages, that specific language, regardless if it's your primary language or not. So we got away from that, you know, PMT was always the same, rolling into PMT and, you know, you're going to do, you know, this much PMT, you're going to rotate back into the box, you're going to do an eight months rotation there, you're going to come back and you do 30 days leave. But that was what we focused on then, which is a GWOT, you know, war, but our teams lost a lot of other skills during

• 39:27Speaker 01

  that time that we're finally bringing back now because of Russia. You know, that's what at least in 10th group and in first group, it was, you know, North Korea at the time was, you know, kind of getting a little pushy with their missiles. So, you know, first group started, and at least my battalion started focusing again on some of those old tasks. And, you know, then the new Green Berets didn't know. I mean, they didn't know my, I know team sergeants, I didn't, I'm not going to use a name because it's, he's somebody that was, you know, killed in action. But when he made team sergeant, he came to me as a sergeant major and he's like, you know, I don't know what to do. All I know is GWOT. All I know is CT. And he was solid,

• 40:12Speaker 01

  he's a great dude and a very solid proficient, you know, operator. And I was like, no, you, you got it. Just, you know, but he self admittedly said, all he knew was GWOT. And we have a whole generation of Green Berets that way. You know, it's, I don't know how we fix, I mean, we are fixing it, but it takes time.

• 40:32Fran Racioppi?

  The topic of discipline and standards is front and center in the Army today. We've been really fortunate as a show and as an organization to have been embraced by someone, you know, Sergeant Major of the Army, Mike Wymer, has been a huge advocate of the show. And we were very lucky to be, have been brought in by the Army to cover some of the big policy changes that the Army has put out over the last couple of months. You know, changes to the Army Fitness Test and then also the Army Directive 670-1, which is a directive that is clarifying guidance that's in Army Regulation 670-1

• 41:12Fran Racioppi?

  around uniform and wearing, wearing appearance of the Army uniform and hair and beard. Well, beards are not covered in that one, although Secretary Hagseth did cover the beard situation clearly in his discussion.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  So.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not a beard, go to special.

• 41:29Fran Racioppi?

  Right, which, well, and so that's why I bring this up because I believe that as a special forces operator, as a Green Beret, there is nothing special about being a Green Beret. We're just a bunch of dudes, but the difference is you do things to a higher standard more consistently without compromise. And so my question to you is, when you think about your long career as a Green Beret and you look at those who wear the Beret now, and you think about the importance of standards and discipline, what does it mean to you to be a Green Beret?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, so I'm, again, go back to, I'm the, of the era of, but, but at the same time, so I, you know, I was fortunate, fortunate enough to spend a long time as a Sergeant Major. So I was 11 years as a Sergeant Major and then all my guys, I mean, they know, hey,

• 42:30Speaker 01

  When you're in garrison and you're back home and you're doing your day to day stuff, I mean, you need to be the best and you need to look the best. You know, I've always been a believer that, that the green beret, it's a symbol and it attracts, you know, greatness. To try to be the best, to be great at everything you do. And so I would tell my guys, I mean, look, guys, when you're walking around post, you're recruiting poster. That's how I, what brought me to special forces was seeing, you know, a green beret and just wearing that thing proudly, you know, and, and not on a big puff of hair and over a beard. You know, it was when you're in garrison, you need to be looking like the most professional soldier.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Because we are professional soldiers and, and yes, whether you have beard or your uniform looks, you know, good or not, you know, some would say doesn't define you as a professional soldier. But it does because again, you're going back to the standards and being exact at everything you do and taking pride in that and, and looking sharp. We have to do that because that's also what brings new guys into the unit. That young E2 or E3, you know, that, that's trying to decide whether he wants to reenlist. You know, in an era where we can't fill the ranks. And we're making numbers in the army, but we're making the wrong numbers in the army.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  You know, because at the end of the day, the army's job is to close with the enemy and kill the enemy. Not go to college or, or, you know, learn how to drive a truck or learn how to cook or, you know, how to do logistics. And that's all parts of the army, but every person in the army needs to be, you know, able to do the army's job, which is close with the enemy and kill. That's what we do. So in order to do that in special forces, we need the right people and we need a constant flow of them coming in. And, and part of that is, you know, guys that see a green beret and say, man, that's what I want to be.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  And I think part of that comes from looking professional, you know, being competent and being in shape. And, uh, you know, not trying to stand out and be special. Because we are the quiet professionals. I remember an instance where I walked into the shop at on Carson, down by the gate, down by gate 20 and. There was this infantry E7 just reaming a guy about how he was looking. I mean, just launched in there and you could tell the guy was an SF guy.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  How could I tell? Well, because he was in a mixed match of uniforms, you know, unkempt hair, you know, two days growth, you know, different boots and he'd been out at the range training, you know, and they just got back and he had stopped into the shopette to grab something on the way back, you know, to the team room. And I didn't say anything. I let the, you know, I let that E7 do his thing. But I was getting it. I drove up to back up to the group and as I was parking, I saw that young soldier parking. And so I was like, okay, I see where he's parked. I know where he's at. So I walked up and I was, hey, man, what was he on you about? And he goes, well, you know, I was just running in there to get a drink on the way. And, and, you know,

• 45:57Speaker 01

  he just started on me about my uniform and, you know, talk about how USF guys, you know, you're making us all look bad. And I'm like, well, how did he know you were an SF guy? Because you have no patches on, right? And he goes, well, yeah, because I got no patches on. I'm like, exactly that. I mean, and he was right. I mean, he was just, I mean, great kid. I mean, I knew the guy. He's a good dude, solid soldier. And he just, now, I won't say, well, you know, hey, you just stopped in to grab something. Well, you know, maybe you go back to team room first and put on a good uniform or at least put on a uniform and then go to the shopette. It's stuff like that that makes us all look bad. It doesn't matter whether it's right or it's wrong. That's what's happening. I mean, people are making judgment calls on us

• 46:42Speaker 01

  by what they see, those first impressions. And I mean, it's not necessary. The beards, but for me, if your mission calls for a beard, scrub beard, you know, but if it doesn't call for a beard, you shouldn't have a beard. I mean, because that's the regulations. I don't know whether it's right or it's wrong, but that's what the regulations say. And you just got to be able to do it. It's not hard.

• 47:09Fran Racioppi?

  Well, you did spend 11 years as a sergeant major and I was fortunate that about three or four of those, I was able to serve under you and around you and it was truly an honor. And I mean, we talk about the standards, we talk about the discipline. I mean, look, I'm biased towards 10th Special Forces Group. It was the honor of my life to serve there and serve with you and some of your peers who were really, you know, very, very instrumental in not only developing me as a young officer. You know, we learned a lot from the officers, but we learned more from the NCOs. I can tell you that. And that was something that I learned as a very young platoon leader. When you walk into a room of already combat experienced NCOs and you realize, you know, I better listen to these guys. And then you kind of

• 47:51Fran Racioppi?

  come over to SF and you realize, well, these guys even have like four more times the experience of the guys in the infantry. And so it truly was an honor to be around you and learn from so many of the things that, you know, you continue to share and love catching up with you this week. And just to be able to see you back in action in this room, you're shaking hands, hugging everybody. It shows the impact over the long term of why SF guys are different from everybody else and how it may seem like a small thing to know a bunch of people in this room, but the people in this room this week are the ones who are affecting international

• 48:30Fran Racioppi?

  policy and are setting the conditions for the security of the world in the future. And so that all comes back to the work that you've done over your career and continue to do at the Global SOF Foundation. So awesome to catch up. Appreciate you sitting down with me. And I think we have a jam of a day here.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  We do, friend. I appreciate it. It has been a phenomenal week here. It, yeah, I'm wore out. It's, but it's good. It's been fantastic just meeting everybody again and seeing everybody again. And I'm truly honored to have been able to help Greece put this on and the Hellenic Special Warfare Command, which, you know, is very close to me because I helped stand it up with them. And so all those people that are hugging me and shaking my hands and these are all the young, they're special operations guys. Some of them I first started working with when they were, you know, E5s or OR5s. And now they're like sergeants major and senior sergeants

• 49:30Speaker 01

  or colonels and generals now. In a lot of cases, a lot of them are generals. But, you know, those are guys that I've developed a relationship over 35 years now. And especially in the last five years, as I helped them stand up special warfare command as a liaison here. And it's been an honor and culmination of this great event. And seeing you here was fantastic. When I found out that you had signed up to come along on this, it was great. I was like, absolutely. And, you know, the Green Beret Foundation, very close and dear to me. I know a lot of, you know, the people there and it's a fantastic work class station.

• 50:08Fran Racioppi?

  Awesome. And I'm jealous you're living in Greece.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:12Fran Racioppi?

  Good coming back.

• 50:17Fran Racioppi?

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Richo. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Extra Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special

• 50:58Fran Racioppi?

  Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.